Our invention relates to interior armor for vehicles and relates particularly to vehicles that carry passengers. Many armored vehicles are standard production vehicles specially modified to accept armor panels. Such vehicles are typically changed so drastically that they can not be adapted for normal use, even if armor components are removed. Also, many armored cargo and passenger vehicles are conspicuous because of their unusual character. Yet for security reasons it is often better for an armored vehicle be hard to distinguish from normal vehicles.
Our invention is a low visibility interior armor construction that can be retrofitted onto production passenger vehicles and thereafter removed, leaving the vehicles in their original configuration. That is, the vehicles' components undergo no permanent deformation or structural change when the armor construction is installed or removed. Our interior armor construction is most typically used for a vehicle door but can be for other panels of an automotive vehicle.
Our armor construction modifies a pre-existing structure comprised of a door panel armor component facing an inboard side of the door and a compressible pad that lies between the inboard side of the door and the armor component. The armor component has hooks by which it hangs on the door. The armor component is tightened to the door by tensionable straps connected between the door and the armor component.
Our construction adds a plate of window armor opposed alongside the door's window frame, and adds a transparent frame which forms a peripheral channel about the plate. A transparent flange is connected between the transparent frame and the door armor component. The frame has continuous polygonal bands forming side walls of the peripheral channel. Beds of the channel are between the polygonal bands and are flush with the bands, so that the transparent frame defines a continuous surface facing outboard of the vehicle. A bracket fixed to the transparent frame has a bracket flange extending into the channel of the door's window frame, the bracket flange being inserted between a pane of door window glass and a portion of a gasket in the window channel.